Judge: Pa. college can exclude morning-after pill coverage for now

PITTSBURGH (AP)  A Christian college can temporarily exclude coverage for birth control like the morning-after pill and the week-after pill when it offers a health insurance plan to its students, a federal judge has ruled.

The injunction issued in favor of Geneva College will remain in effect until the judge rules on the school's underlying lawsuit challenging looming federal health care reforms, or until a higher appeals court rules on the issue.

The school in Beaver Falls, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, is affiliated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church and argues certain types of birth control violate its religious beliefs against abortion.

U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti in Pittsburgh issued the ruling Tuesday, two days before a deadline for the school to pick a health plan to cover students next academic year. The ruling doesn't address the school's employee health plan, because the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 won't require employee plans to cover the types of birth control objected to until January.

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The lawsuit was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian civil rights group, and is similar to more than 50 lawsuits filed in federal courts across the country by religious-affiliated agencies or faith-based groups.

Geneva does not oppose contraception, but its president, Kenneth Smith, said when the lawsuit was filed last year that it challenges "the government requiring us and other religious organizations to provide services against which we have a religious and morally based conviction."

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately return a call for comment on the ruling, which ADF attorney Gregory Baylor said was significant because it's the first obtained by a nonprofit in such a lawsuit.

"It does give us some cause for optimism in this case," Baylor said, adding, "at least with this district judge."

Conti had previously dismissed the lawsuit after agreeing with the Justice Department that the school wasn't suffering immediate harm, because federal officials had promised the regulations would be changed to exempt such institutions from parts of the law they found morally objectionable.

But the judge reinstated much of the lawsuit in a 17-page ruling issued last month after the school argued it had to decide soon whether to drop its student health insurance plan.